Relativity and Cosmology

Why Over 30 Years Aether Wind Was not Detected in Michelson-Type Experiments with Resonators

We show that measured by S.Herrmann et al., Phys.Rev.D 80, 105011 (2009) small (but finite) value of relative variation (δν/ν>0) of the resonance frequency of an evacuated optical resonator, when changing its orientation in space, can not serve as an indication of the absence of a preferred direction concerned with the absolute motion of the setup. On the contrary, the finiteness δν/ν>0 testifies to spatial anisotropy of the velocity of light. In order to detect the absolute motion and determine the value and direction of its velocity, the volume of the resonator should be regarded, at any degree of evacuation, as being an optical medium, with its refractive index n>1 to be necessarily taken into account, irrespective of the extent to be the medium's tenuity. In this event the residual pressure of the evacuated medium should be controlled: that will ensure the magnitude of n to be known at least to the first significant digit after 1.00000...
If the working body is a gas then, as in the case of the fringe shift in the interferometer, the shift δν of the resonance frequency of the volume resonator is proportional to n2–1=Δε and to the square of the velocity υ of absolute motion of the resonator. At sufficiently large values of optical density, δν is proportional to (n2–1)(2–n2)=Δε(1–Δε), and at n>1.5 it may possess such a great value that there even becomes possible a jump of the automatic laser frequency trimmer from the chosen m-mode of the reference resonator to its adjacent m±1 modes. Taking into account the effect of the medium permittivity by introducing in calculation the actual value n>1 in experiments with resonators performed by the scheme of the Michelson experiment enabled us to estimate the absolute speed of the Earth as several hundreds kilometers per second.

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